Last week, yours truly was stricken after taking the old hefty glug from a cup of coffee whose contents, upon further inspection, were at least three weeks old and had given rise to a fecund cauldron of life. The ensuing details, I will spare.

This year the Jeanne Ruddy's launching her company's first-ever fall season.

Ever wondered what would happen if characters from different fairy tales met?

Hosting evening soirées is a good way to get folks into art museums. Throw in a little nudity, and all hell breaks loose.

All 12 participants in Wednesday's Grand Slam are previous First Person Arts StorySlam winners, and now they're competing for the big daddy of prizes: free Slams, for life.

This exhibit of aural installations and experiments is half-mystery, half-algebra.

Eric Gansworth's novel Extra Indians (Milkweed, Nov. 1) opens with the epigraph "THIS IS A TRUE STORY," which comes from Fargo's opening credits. It's important because Extra Indians starts out by telling the tale of a trucker who picks up a Japanese girl out searching for Fargo's missing treasure. Having taken the movie's fictional disclaimer as fact, she ends the night outside, in the northern Minnesota winter, dead from exposure.

Silverhill pits sympathetic characters against each other in 1891 upstate New York, where a 247-person commune practices a "doctrine of perfectionism": no police, lawyers, churches or money "on the authority of Scripture" — Bible-based communism.

Adapting Randall Kenan's short story, McCraney maintains the writer's omniscience: Characters slide from third-person description of themselves into first-person action. Narrating events as they occur seems redundant, but this observer's point of view reveals surprising intimacy.

Once you get past the initial shock, the idea of making a comedy about suicide bombers doesn't actually seem so far-fetched.

"We chose films that we felt did something brave, challenged themselves," says director of programming Olivia Antsis.

The two cardinal rules for reviewing anything, be it music, film or that creepy massage parlor out by the interstate, are as follows: 1) Don't write about your friends, and 2) Despite the highly subjective nature of the act of reviewing, don't write in the first person singular.

Wu Man is the best-known player of the pipa (aka, Chinese lute) in the world. Tan Dun, Academy Award winner for his score to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , is surely the marquee Chinese composer of our day.

They don't make 'em like Dexter Romweber anymore. Hell, they didn't make 'em like Dexter Romweber back in the '80s, when he was a rockabilly guitar phenom cutting his teeth with the Flat Duo Jets.

Chrissy Piper's "Three Records" project asks people (some indie-famous, some not) to name three albums that have changed or inspired their lives.

Where Rainer Maria could summon a maelstrom of brains and brawn, Caithlin De Marrais' solo stuff feels more like the eye of the storm than the edge.

The Dandy Warhols have never been as truly odd as they seem to fancy themselves (nor as dandy, though very possibly as Warholian).

Once a lo-fi bedroom pop star who coasted on easygoing Casio keystrokes, Khaela Maricich  is currently indie rock's most alluring and visionary dance diva.

Drivin N Cryin started recording demos on Sept. 10, 2001, and it took a long time to find the heart to return to the studio. The wait was worth it.

The appeal of Avec Eric, the companion volume to the chef's public television program of the same name, lies in Ripert's line-abandoning wanderlust.

Cake Boss' Buddy Valastro at Merriam Theater | Sunday Supper at Supper | Mémé Regional Wine Dinner: Oregon | Brazilian Lunch and a Movie at Chima Brazilian Steakhouse

"Genealogy, which was really a complacent field, underwent two revolutions through the years," Shawker says. "The first was the Internet and the second was the use of DNA testing for genealogy — but the science is somewhat difficult."

Mighty Writers, a nonprofit dedicated to getting kids excited about the written word, is hosting a writers' event for people who don't like writers' events.